2015/09/22

(OBN Tokyo) According to Huffington Post, best-selling author of the blockbuster war film "The Eternal Zero" made another slander of our friendly countries belonging to the Pacific Islands Forum, the countries that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said were "Pacific Citizens" on May 2015 at the Pacific Islands Leaders Meeting as being "poor shitty tenements". It appears to be one of his classic black jokes, according to the Post.

Best-seller author Naoki Hyakuta (Photo: Jiji Press)

According to sources, the author, a 59 year-old Naoki Hyakuta was attending a 'culture and arts' study session hosted by young LDP members from Prime Minister Abe's circle as guest lecturer on June 25 when he made the controversial remark.

The exact words, according to Asahi Digital, were:

"The small islands in the South Pacific, such as Nauru, Vanuatu, and Tuvalu, are almost sinking. If you think of them as houses, they are poor shitty tenements. There's nothing to take from them."

Reportedly, the author also mentioned Iceland in a related remark:

"Iceland is of course absorbed in ice for the entire year. No natural resources. Who would wanna take anything from that kind of country anyways?"

Hyakuta has made similar remarks in broadcast television as well. He once admitted that "shitty" was going too far, but he did again this time, and even enunciated it to make a stronger point.

Apparently, he was making these remarks in relation to the 26 countries in the world that do not own national military, assumingly stressing why these countries can do without military but not Japan.

He once made a similar remark in May last year in the LDP prefectural convention as one of the keynote speakers and was questioned by his distinguished guests in the convention. That time, Hyakuta conceded that it was 'just a joke'.

In a television talk show aired on June 1 this year, Hyakuta explained himself saying, "In the lecture, I was speaking about how the Japanese people have worked hard to reconstruct Japan in the postwar world for about 90 minutes. The talk about them (the South Pacific islands) was just a 'lead- in', a few seconds in that context."

Reportedly, the well-known friend of the ultranationalist Prime Minister Abe was speaking about national defense and was explaining how the retention of rights to exercise collective self-defense and the right of belligerency contributes to deter wars.

"Think of military in terms of houses. It acts as a 'key' to lock the doors to prevent crimes. So we need to retain this 'key'," said Hyakuta.

He then went on to compare the peaceful nations of Vanuatu, Nauru, and Tuvalu as "houses without keys," and then made that remark saying these countries are like "poor shitty tenements" and that " No robber would ever want to rob them because they have nothing worth taking."

In the TV show, he went on to explain that the full context of his speech wasn't fully covered in the newspapers.

"Though the newspapers didn't cover (in full), I mentioned that there are over 200 countries in the world, and that 20 or so countries don't have a national military. The small Caribbean and South Pacific island countries are so small that Nauru is only about a half of the Setagaya Ward in Tokyo. If you think of them as houses, it’s about the size of a poor shitty tenement. It's so poor that even robbers will try to leave some money in pitty. And then the audience all laughed," explained Hyakuta.

When other guests in the show pointed out to him that expressions like 'shitty' or 'poor' were not necessary, he rebutted saying, "I didn't want the audience to mistaken as being a wealthy tenement." He said, adding expressions like ‘shitty’ were to make things easier to understand in Osaka, where he comes from. He even said that he was once invited as a guest in a debate show in Osaka and made similar remarks but "they all understood that it was a joke so no one made a fuss about it."

When he was asked by the other guests whether he thought it was considerate of him to make such a remark, he replied, "But it's true. Isn't it?" and went on to say, "I myself grew up in the same poor tenements and I do not see shame being poor."

In the show, he continued to insist that it was "just a joke" and that he would neither apologize nor take back his remarks. But he conceded on one point and said this, laughingly:

"May be I can take back 'shitty'. That was out of class."

Naoki Hyakuta is the author of a million-seller novel "The Eternal Zero" which later became a blockbuster war film that glorified a zero-fighter pilot's heroism.

Perhaps the leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum countries should offer Mr. Hyakuta a state visit along with Prime Minister Abe to show just how 'poor' they are that they cannot even host their honored guests properly.